Barbour's Bruce, ed. Skeat, xviii. 167.
I. e. they have caused it (to be) salted. And again in the same, bk. viii. l. 13, we have the expression He gert held, as if 'he caused to be held'; but it may mean 'he caused to incline.' Compare also the following:—
'And thai sall let thame trumpit ill'; id. xix. 712.
I. e. and they shall consider themselves as evilly deceived.
In the Royal Wills, ed. Nichols, p. 278, we find:—'wher I have beforn ordeyned and do mad [caused to be made] my tombe.'
The infinitive appears to have been fraughten, though the earliest certain examples of this form seem to be those in Shakespeare, Cymb. i. 1. 126, Temp. i. 2. 13. The proper form of the pp. was fraughted (as in Marlowe, 2 Tamb. i. 2. 33), but the loss of final -ed in past participles of verbs of which the stem ends in t is common; cf. set, put, &c. Hence this form fraught as a pp. in the present instance. It is a Scandinavian word, from Swed. frakta, Dan. fragte. At a later period we find freight, the mod. E. form. The vowel-change is due to the fact that there was an intermediate form fret, borrowed from the French form fret of the Scandinavian word. This form fret disturbed the vowel-sound, without wholly destroying the recollection of the original guttural gh, due to the Swed. k. For an example of fret, we have only to consult the old black-letter editions of Chaucer printed in 1532 and 1561, which give us the present line in the form—'These marchantes han don fret her ships new.'
185. ceriously, 'seriously,' i. e. with great minuteness of detail. Used by Fabyan, who says that 'to reherce ceryously' all the conquests of Henry V would fill a volume; Chron., ed. Ellis, p. 589. Skelton, in his Garland of Laurell, l. 581, has: 'And seryously she shewyd me ther denominacyons'; on which Dyce remarks that it means seriatim, and gives a clear example. It answers to the Low Latin seriose, used in two senses; (1) seriously, gravely; (2) minutely,
fully. In the latter case it is perhaps to be referred to the Lat. series, not serius. A similar word, cereatly (Lat. seriatim), is found three times in the Romance of Partenay, ed. Skeat, with the sense of in due order; cf. Ceriatly and Ceryows in the New E. Dict.
In N. and Q. 7 S. xii. 183, I shewed that Lydgate has at least ten examples of this use of the word in his Siege of Troye. In one instance it is spelt seryously (with s).
190. This refers to the old belief in astrology and the casting of nativities. Cf. Prol. A. 414-418. Observe that ll. 190-203 are not in the original, and were doubtless added in revision. This is why this sowdan in l. 186 is so far separated from the repetition of the same words in l. 204.